Tammy Archer, Former Mutant
by The Nerdinator
Summary: New Heroes, S1E8. A robbery with scabby traces leads the Grossologists on a surprisingly normal mission. With one key difference – Ty accidentally genderbent himself and lost access to his powers. Can Tammy tap into his/her pre-mutation life before the scheme is seen to its conclusion? Special episode for Pride Month.
1. Cold Open

"Uh, boss?" a stock boy asked, scratching his head as he looked into an empty truck. "Did the store order a shipment of Miss Louise's skin care products?"

"Yes," replied his supervisor. "What's the problem?"

"I'm not seeing it. They use their own boxes, and I didn't see any of them."

"Well, maybe they _didn't_ use their own fancy packaging this time around?"

"We considered that, but we searched through all of those boxes and didn't find even a tiny little bottle of moisturizer."

"Okay, now THAT is gonna come out of our paychecks," the supervisor sighed. "If we don't get _something_ out onto the sales floor, we're toast!"

"Excuse me?" A woman walked in. She was tall and slender with long, dark brown hair, dressed in a formal-looking purple suit and thick maroon horn rim glasses. "Miss Louise hasn't been keeping up with her demands, for her products have been going missing as of late. Luckily, _my_ company can fix that." She handed the supervisor a business card. "I'm a spokeswoman for Platelet Industries, and we've got by _far_ the best reputation. _We_ never lose our goods. I've already contacted your manager and we'll be paying for your lost products. Though you _might_ wanna mark up the price a bit."

"Our crap's 30% overpriced anyway," the supervisor shrugged.

"'Platelet'?" the stock boy asked.

"Because our products are designed to patch you up!" the woman grinned.

"Oh! Very clever. Thanks a bunch, lady!"

The woman smiled and left. Once out of earshot, she took off her glasses. "No, thank _you_, you _fools_," Helena Globin chuckled deviously.

_Cue theme song._


	2. New Girl(ish)

**AN: This fic is set on September 17, 2014.**

* * *

"...and THAT, Alex, is why I believe Heather's plan to get back at Julia is gonna go _completely_ banana-shaped," Sam finished as they wandered the halls during lunch.

"Very...insightful," Alex decided on. "You really like that show, huh?"

"Yep! 'Corporate Spy' has everything I could hope for in teenage sitcoms." They rounded a corner. "I should get _you_ into it, y'know? You might like it. It's got all sorts of deep plot details and – hey, hold on, have I seen her before?" She pointed to a girl who was trying to avoid being seen. She had black hair tied back in a massive, tall ponytail and wore a cerulean polo t-shirt, green cargo pants, and black sneakers.

"Those clothes...that babyish jaw structure..." Alex mused. "Ty?"

The girl jumped. "Who, me? N-nothing to see here, just Tammy trying to go along in life!" she stammered.

"'Tammy'?" Sam asked. "Oh! I didn't know. ...Congrats, I guess?"

"Sam, since _when_ has he...she...whoever they are right now–"

"'She' is fine for the moment."

"–shown _any_ indication of being trans?"

"Oh," Sam realized. "Sorry? ...But seriously, Ty or Tammy or whatever, what's with...that?"

"It was an _accident_," Tammy growled. "It started this morning..."

* * *

_Some hours earlier_

"Hey! Dork!"

Ty grimaced as he slammed his locker shut. "What do you _want_, Kent?"

"To put you back into your place! I mean, look at you! All scrawny and crap."

"I have _superstrength_, so an apparent lack of musculature is kind of irrelevant for someone like me." Ty demonstrated this by picking up a steel barbell, placing one side in either palm, and then slamming his hands together, flattening the barbell into a thin, sharp disc, which he promptly ate. Menacingly.

"...well, you're still not a man! You don't even have a _beard_!"

"So? Lots of guys don't have facial hair. My dad, my brother, half of our male teachers, some of the preeminent scientists of our _time_. The list goes on. And just because puberty wasn't kind to me _physically_, I dare say I really lucked out in the mental department, zirconium-93 contamination notwithstanding."

"How?"

"_I_ have a girlfriend. And you don't appear to be mentally mature enough to handle that responsibility." He turned around and left. But Kent scrambled in front of him, blocking his path.

"I ain't leaving until you grow a beard!"

"Fine." Ty concentrated, trying to use his supernumerary organ growth power to grow more hair. However, he accidentally morphed instead.

* * *

His chest became less flat. The contours of his crotch changed. His hair lengthened, part of it breaking off and turning into a dark purple hair tie.

* * *

"..._dangit_."

Kent burst out laughing. "Now you're even _less_ manly!"

"And girls are weaker than boys, I suppose?" Kent immediately shut up when a scowling Abby walked up next to her brother...sister? He wisely ran away.

"Thanks," Tammy sighed.

"So I take it this was the morph you didn't want to summon?"

"Yeah, I thought I _locked_ it. Guess I locked tam o'shanter instead. Stupid index interface."

"What did you need it locked for?"

"Hormonal imbalance. Tammy's got a testosterone deficiency, and my powers require testosterone to function."

"Are you _sure_ they need testosterone? Half of your morphs aren't exactly organic. Anyway, you're saying you're stuck like this until you get an injection of some sort?"

"Yep."

"Huh. Hey, I always wanted a sister."

"Don't you _dare_."

"Oh, sorry. Touchy subject?"

"Yeah."

"I see. We'll fix this, bro. By the way? Tampons cost a quarter."

"...you know what? That's actually pertinent information. Thanks."

* * *

"Ah," Alex nodded. "Well, let's hope you get better. You seem down."

"I _am_," Tammy sighed. "After the accident broke my mind, my powers sort of...helped keep me together. Helped me use that brokenness to my advantage. But now that that's gone...who _am_ I?"

"Someone in the middle of an existential crisis?" Sam offered.

"I guess so."

"Don't worry, the world has ways of evening things out. C'mon Alex, we're gonna miss government."

"Oh, _joy_, the class where the teacher _hates_ me," Alex glowered as they left Tammy alone with her thoughts. Suddenly, her grossometer beeped. Making sure no one was around, she opened it.

"Should I ask?" the Director remarked on seeing Tammy's condition.

"Nah, we've already had _one_ flashback today. What's up?"

"A shipment of skin care products has gone missing. Since many of our enemies have bones to pick with skin care, we've been asked to investigate."

"Sure thing." Suddenly, she tensed up and groaned. "But I _might_ need the bathroom. Like, really bad."

"Number one or number two?" Tammy held up three fingers, causing him to pale. "_Oh._ Lady problems. Well, take your time, we don't want you straining yourself."


	3. Cream's Getting Cropped

Tammy limped into the Gag Lab, the rest of the Grossologists waiting and watching her as she slumped into a chair. "UGH. Whatever respect I had for women before, I now have twice that amount. How do you guys even put _up_ with this every month?"

"We may never know," Paige shrugged.

"Know what?" Jetpack asked.

"Abby informed us about your...condition, but I didn't expect it to go _that_ far," Chester winced. "You okay, buddy?"

"Not really. I just lost an important part of myself today...and I don't know when I'm getting it back," Tammy moped.

"Well, you didn't _always_ have that part of you," Naomi pondered sympathetically. "So maybe you can try and remember who you were before then."

"...are we talking about his powers or something else?" Chester asked, a little confused.

"My powers, _duh_! I could care less about what's inside my pants," Tammy replied. "Although wiping myself _has_ become a literal pain in the butt."

"Speaking of butts," Lab Rat coughed, "the mission?"

"Oh. Right. So what's going on?"

"The skin care brand Miss Louise hasn't been delivering its products to the locations that sell them. We got called this morning when one of its delivery trucks was found." He brought up a picture of a standard truck whose front end was completely covered in brownish crust, anchoring it to the grass.

"Yep, that's Scab Fairy's doing all right," Chester confirmed.

"It _is_ weird, though," Abby mused. "You'd think that would be a two-person job, yet unlike Lance I don't think she's hired any goons before. So could this be a team-up?"

"Maybe, but that'd require a commonality connection," Tammy remarked. "Someone who also holds a grudge against Miss Louise and has a similar enough theme. Last I knew villain team-ups didn't last too long excepting romantic relationships, although with their new bureaucratic level of organization that may have changed significantly."

"See? _That's_ the you I was talking about," Naomi smiled. "You've still got it."

"...Thanks. I...needed that."

"What about motivation?" Chester asked. "Why Miss Louise specifically?"

"Hm..." Abby turned around in her seat. "Paige, you're the vainest one here, do _you_ know anything about their corporate infrastructure?"

"_Ha_," her blonde rival deadpanned. "But to tell you the truth, I've read a lotta stuff about them. However fussy _I_ am about appearance? They're _WAY_ worse. I remember hearing a story about how a model they sponsored got a scab like, the size of a pinhead, and they dropped her without a second thought. Now that I'm here, though, I'm starting to think there's a connection."

"Yeah, that's Scab Fairy's tragic backstory more or less verbatim," Chester affirmed. "So there's our motivation, guys. She wants revenge on her old sponsor for being a jerk. As for how she pulls it off, we'll figure that out when we catch her."

"And you're going to get that chance," Lab Rat smirked. "Miss Louise wants three of us guarding their next shipment. Tammy, Paige, Jetpack, you're on that. Even if we don't get her immediately, we might see how she does it."

"Okay!" Jetpack said, quickly standing up and strutting away. "Come with me, ladies! We're gonna save the white goop even though it doesn't do anything!"

"Maybe it doesn't do anything for you because you're, y'know, _metal_?" Paige asked incredulously as she and Tammy followed him out.

"He'll get it eventually."


	4. The Other Guy

Jetpack slammed into a white delivery truck with the Miss Louise logo on its side, before recovering and scuttling onto its roof. "AH!" the driver shrieked on hearing the ruckus.

"Don't worry, sir, the robot's on _your_ side," came a voice from above as the GRS-1 hovered above the truck. "We're your escort."

"Oh," he breathed, relieved. "Thanks."

Tammy turned off the com and sighed. "What's so wrong about being a girl?" Paige asked.

"It's not that I'm a girl, it's that I spent most of my life identifying as male. And this female mental state is _not_ easy to get used to."

"There's a difference between boy and girl minds?"

"Of course there is. Gender is a neurological construct dictating how one associates with the reproductive organs encoded by their allosomes. Nonbinary genders wouldn't exist otherwise."

"Hm," she nodded. "Speaking of, what about Jetpack? Is he _really_ a boy? I don't wanna be rude, but he doesn't exactly have DNA."

"He has a masculine-configured mental state, so as far as I'm concerned, yes, he is." Tammy frowned. "I know Abby already told him about what happened before we had chem, but I still had to explain to him that _no_, unlike certain fish species or incredibly rare genetic disorders, people are _not_ sequential hermaphrodites."

"I have no idea what that is, but I'm gonna take your word for it."

"Take words? I didn't know you could do that!" Jetpack exclaimed through the com. "Do you need special gloves or something to touch the words, though?"

"Jetpack, stay focused," Tammy replied.

"Oh, yeah." Suddenly, a rumbling noise. "Hey, what's that?"

* * *

Jetpack scuttled over to the back end of the truck. "Mr. Hairy Man?" he asked.

"My name is _Fredrick Follicle_, you ignorant machine!" Follice, hanging onto the back of the truck with his hair tentacles, snapped.

"Well okay Mr. Folly, but I can't let you take this truck." Jetpack protracted the claws on his left hand and raised his arm to swing and slice one of the tentacles off.

"Are you MAD?!" Follicle shrieked. "If I fall off a moving vehicle I will DIE!"

"Jetpack, we have a no-kill policy for the villains," Paige said through the com.

"Oh, sorry, didn't know that would kill you. I'm still gonna get you, though." With that, the robot retracted his claws and pounced, then started to fly up, the struggling man in his grasp.

"Atta boy, little bro!" Tammy whooped. "Now we know who Scab Fairy's accomplice is. But why him?"

"Well, I wanted a little time in the spotlight, seeing that I _am_ one of the more obscure villains," Follicle grunted. "That, and what is hair but part of the skin? Miss Louise has several hair care products that I'd love to see off the shelves and in the _trash_."

"Yeah, well, some of _us_ wanna keep using that stuff, decent conditioner's hard to find," Paige retorted. "But then it doesn't seem like you know much about that. Seriously, ugh, your hair is so _greasy_. How are you not covered in zits yet?"

"He screwed around with his own hormones, that's why," Tammy replied. "Wait. Hormones! If we catch this guy, we can make him make me some testosterone and bring me back to normal!"

"...wait, hold on. Is Ty a _girl_?" Follicle asked, confused.

Tammy laughed sheepishly. "It's a...long story."

"And _this_ story is about to get much _longer_!" Jetpack was hit by a patch of scab right on his left hindwing. He fell into a tree, Follicle escaping from his grasp and jumping back onto the truck. The GRS-1 came face-to-face with a thin purple helicopter, the Scab Fairy at the helm. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I have a truck to rob." A press of a button, and the green ship was fired upon with a Scabifier built into the chopper. The weight of the scabs forced the Grossologists to land before the GRS-1 exploded.

Luckily, the hatch was still openable, so the girl and sorta-girl leapt out and took after her. Alas, the helicopter was too fast, and it scabbed up the truck half a mile away. Follicle picked open the lock with his prehensile hair, swinging the doors open. Quickly and hastily, the truck was emptied into the chopper, before both villains absconded.

"Nuts," Tammy grimaced, panting upon reaching the emptied truck, the bewildered driver staggering out.

Jetpack caught up to them, covered in maple leaves. "What'd I miss?" he asked.

"Their scheme. Curse this stupid body!"

"So I take it you've never ran with boobs before?" Paige asked. "Yeah, [t word]s are a bit of a hassle to live with."

"I gathered." Tammy approached the driver. "Sir, we are _so_ sorry this happened."

"Well, you know what they're doing now, kid. So go get 'em!"

"Hey, there's a bottle of hand goop in here!" Jetpack said, stopping a bottle of lotion rolling around the floor with his foot. "They must've forgotten about it. Evidence!"

"Hm...you might be onto something there..." Tammy pondered. "How much is it?"

"It's on the house, it's police business."

"Oh. Goody."


	5. Some Normalcy For Once

"Okay, we have some of Miss Louise's stuff," Tammy said as she entered the Gag Lab. "Jetpack, if you please." The robot opened his chest compartment and handed him/her the bottle, which he/she set on the table.

"What are we going to do with that?" Lab Rat asked incredulously. "I can't do much without a context."

"Then I'll _give_ you one," Abby said, handing the scientist a similar bottle, only blood red instead of white. "I decided to investigate the pharmacy that lost the shipment, and they said they got this more expensive brand called Platelet to make up for it. The timing was weird, not to mention the name, so I snagged their cheapest item and brought it here for testing."

"'Cheapest'?" Paige asked.

"Not _everyone_ lives in your tax bracket," Chester quipped. "_I_ certainly don't."

"Aren't you supposed to be taking a quiz?"

"It's a take-home quiz."

"Well it looks like you lucked out," Lab Rat said. "These bottles appear to be the same exact shape and size. All we need is a chemical analysis of the lotion itself to confirm what I think we're all thinking. Tammy?"

"On it." He/she unscrewed both bottles, then removed her gloves and placed a dollop of lotion on each hand near the joint of the thumb.

"Manicure come with the morph?" Abby asked, noticing her new sister's frosty pink fingernails.

"Yeah, I guess so. Heh, I never thought gendering colors was right anyway. Today's been so _insightful_. I guess shapeshifters really _do_ need to consider their gender identity." He/she held up his/her hands to Jetpack, who flickered his eyes over the lotion spots. "So what're they made of?"

"Weird names," he replied. "But they're the same names. So...did I win?"

"Yes, you did. Now we've confirmed our suspicions."

"Suspicions of _what_?" The Director had suddenly tuned in.

"Sir, I believe we've figured out what's going on," Chester said, turning around to address his boss. "Miss Louise stopped funding Scab Fairy when that fateful scab formed, and she wants revenge. She's taken Fredrick Follicle along for the ride because he doesn't like that brand either. They're stealing Miss Louise products, painting over them, and then selling them to the public at a higher price. Miss Louise's reputation takes a hit, and ACE gets some funding of its own."

The Director gawked. "...are you _kidding_ me?!"

"What? What's wrong?" Naomi asked.

"That's...that's the _least gross thing they've done in the three years that I've been director_! **I** could've gone on this mission for once!"

"Yeah, it's a bit tame for them," Lab Rat admitted. "Must be a slow creative day."

"OR they're low on money, which is also likely," Abby reminded him, "thus giving them the perfect timing for this revenge scheme. If we stop them, we'll keep them on the low for a while."

"Then let's get to it!" The Director barked. "Tammy, Naomi, Jetpack, you're heading to the next pharmacy where the shipment that got robbed should've gone to. We need to stop them NOW!"

* * *

At the pharmacy, Tammy looked at his/her girlfriend. "Uh...Naomi?"

"Yeah?"

"If I don't change back...will you still like me?"

"Tammy, of _course_ I will! You knew I was pan when we started dating."

"I don't know much, but you don't _look_ cast-iron," Jetpack remarked.

"Not that kind of pan. 'Pan' as in 'pansexual'."

"So you fall in love with pans?"

Naomi sighed. "Jetpack, do you know about reproductive organs?"

"I have them!"

"...okay, _that_ revelation is _really_ disturbing, and don't you usually pass out when you figure out an innuendo? No, wait, I can work with this. Jetpack, the programming that tells you how to use your...parts also gives your mind a specific...shape, I guess? You have boy parts, and the programming for that also gives you a boy-shaped brain. I have girl parts, and _my_ programming gives me a girl-shaped brain."

"I can understand this. Keep going."

"But that's not always true. In a few people their programming gives them boy parts but a _girl_-shaped brain, or vice-versa. That's called transgender. Sometimes the programming's messed up and the parts are sorta boy parts but also sorta girl parts; that's called intersex. Sometimes people can change the shape of their brains; that's called genderfluid. And some people have brain shapes that aren't boy _or_ girl-shaped; that's called nonbinary.

"It plays into romantic attraction, too. You, for example, are attracted to girl-shaped brains only and you have a boy-shaped brain; you're what we call heterosexual, or straight. A few people are attracted only to the same brain shape as their own; that's called being homosexual, or gay, or lesbian if you're a girl. Some people can be attracted to girl _and_ boy-shaped brains; that's called being bisexual.

"And if you're _pan_sexual, like me, you can be attracted to the rare nonbinary brains too."

"Which brings us to an important question: why have we never noticed?" Jetpack asked.

"Because Naomi and I are also _demi_sexual, which means we only fall in love with people we really know and trust closely," Tammy explained. "S'why Abby had celebrity crushes as a little kid but I never did."

"What if you can't fall in love?"

"That's called asexual, I think Lab Rat might be but he hasn't said so we can't assume. It's a little more complicated than that but we'll explain the romantic part of the equation when you're older," Naomi finished.

"Okay. It's really cool to learn, though! So many things!" He paused. "But why does Texas hate those other people?"

"Again, when you're older," Tammy sighed.


	6. Former No More

The three teens snuck around the back, where a red truck was being unloaded. "Put your hands in the air!" Naomi ordered. The workmen panicked as they did as they were told. "Have any of you seen a man about waist-height and walking on hair tentacles?"

"Not recently, although there was my uncle Bert," a workman mused.

"The man we are looking for is a Mr. Fredrick Follicle, member of the Association of Clarksburg Evildoers. Those products which you are unloading are part of a scheme to give his organization some critical funding."

"And I will _GET THAT FUNDING!_" Suddenly, Follicle lunged at them, spraying them with a thick cloud. Once the cloud settled, the men, and Naomi, had long beards. A press of a button, and their beards had bound them.

"Not _again_," Naomi groaned. "This is so _itchy_."

"Why aren't _I_ affected?" Jetpack asked.

"You're a robot, no hormones," Tammy replied. She scratched the back of her neck and her eyes widened. "Hormones...hair growth is dependent on testosterone..." Her body flashed white, and a super-long second left arm with a mug for a hand emerged. "I'm [f word]ing BACK, [b word]es!"

"Oh...I completely forgot about that," Follicle whimpered. Tammy grinned at him sadistically and advanced. "No no no NO! AAAAAAAH!" He ran away, smacking into Jetpack and falling unconscious.

"Pfffft!" Tammy laughed. "Coward." She flexed her fingers. "Now let's see how she handles now that her hormones are balanced. Jetpack, take Follicle to the nearest police station."

"Will do!" Jetpack tied the villain up in his own hair and flew away with him in his claws. Tammy turned his/her extra left hand into a raygun, donned a gas mask, and sprayed estrogen on the crowd, restoring their bodies before retracting her extra hand.

"Thanks, babe," Naomi smiled, walking over, removing his/her gas mask and kissing him/her to everyone's surprise. "Hey, I kissed a girl. And I _liked_ it."

"Young love is _so_ cute," a workman sighed.

"Cute? CUTE? **CUTE?!** Only ONE woman deserves to be cute: ME!" The Scab Fairy had returned, her helicopter ready to scab, moment? Dead. "And I will HOLD YOU WHERE YOU STAND if I have to!"

"How will you know where I stand if you can't see me?" Tammy turned invisible, forcing the Scab Fairy to fire at random. However, with his/her oozing power, dodging was a cinch.

"Ugh, I told Follicle to wait until that shipment had gone IN!" Helena griped to herself. "So we could pull this off before Ty regained his powers!" Suddenly, her helicopter shuddered. She looked out the window to see a now-visible Tammy eating the rotor.

"Dude, deadnaming _hurts_," he/she deadpanned. Scab Fairy jumped out of the plummeting vehicle (which Tammy thankfully caught before it crashed and hurt anyone), and landed on her feet. But she didn't last long; Naomi quickly subdued her with some well-placed kicks.

"And that's the end of _that_," Tammy sighed. Her chest flattened, her hair withdrew, and soon Ty Archer, mutant extraordinaire, was back to himself. "And that's the end of _this_ misadventure."

"Uh...there's _another_ mutant?" a third workman asked.

"I'm the guy who went to rescue him. Then I fell in too and we both saw some alien-looking thingy that gave us both powers," Ty fibbed, remembering the carefully-rehearsed lie.

"Oh! Cool."

* * *

"There are two things that I have learned today," Ty declared to his sister back at school. "One, periods hurt. Like, a _lot_. Two, no matter whether I'm a boy or a girl or some other thing, I am a smart, witty, and brave individual who can kick butts and save the day!"

"Good to know," Abby nodded.

"HA! Nerd!" Kent taunted. Ty responded by growing a massive beard, and Kent, thoroughly intimidated, ran away screaming.

"Also, beards are _severely_ overrated," Ty grimaced, quickly tearing off the beard and absorbing it into his hand, before patting his bald chin. "Now _this_? _This_ is me." Abby rolled her eyes and joined her brother as they went to AP Calculus AB.


	7. Credits Gag

"You know, there's one thing I _don't_ get," Chester remarked.

"What's that?" Lab Rat asked.

"Weren't most of us in..._junior_ high in the original series? Like, middle school?"

"It wasn't ever really clear. Plus you guys often knew things no twelve-year-old would. So here, Ringworm is a middle school converted into a highschool and they just never bothered to change the name."

"Ah."

The end.


End file.
